@airrabbit
While I am not exactly sure who maintains our simulator, it is done inhouse. I fly for a large (west) European airline and know from other (non simulator) processes, the "government" is really demanding a lot of procedures, documents and checking/testing, so I assume, but again, do not know for sure, the simulators are also routinely checked and properly maintained/programmed.
As far as operating the thing, I only "fly" it once every few months, do I can't comment on it, but assuming it is working properly, how can you screw it up as an operator when you input 25kts xwind? Again, I have no experience "pushing" the buttons, but I do have experience in the fact our simulators (for this type of aircraft) give me a lot of bad landings, while in real life my landings go fine.
Whatever the reasons, I can't properly land the simulator version of my aircraft. And I am not alone. When there was too little in-house capacity to train pilots, they trained them at other airlines in other countries. Different simulator, different operators, different regulators, but same experience (for some at least). Posts in this topic tell me the same, xwind training on simulators do not always work, be it the simulator, the maintaining, the operating, the pilots themselves, but the only thing my simulator training taught me was to "fear" xwind. Fortunately, real life taught me something else.
(I am specifically talking about landings, not other aspects of training. Besides that, the training does give you a rough outline of the technique used on landing. But was I prepared, sufficiently trained and confident to do a 25kts xwind on my first flights? No, not even close. After a year of flying, I get closer to that point, but purely based on experience gained in real life, not simulators).